


Left Behind

by authoresswithoutwords



Series: Left [7]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Halloween, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:40:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23627050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/authoresswithoutwords/pseuds/authoresswithoutwords
Summary: Lily prepares herself for the birth of her baby, getting so annoyed with her husband that she'll probably regret it when her hormones stabilise, and looking forward to finally being able to move again. Bending down and being able to tie your own shoes is awesome, right?!//This work can be understood without having read any other in this series.//
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter
Series: Left [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1658788
Comments: 12
Kudos: 298





	Left Behind

**Author's Note:**

> I figured I'd stray from my usual formula for these... side stories? AUs of an AU?... of death and destruction all around and ended up with canon death and destruction...
> 
> Enjoy!

Humming, Lily dances through the room. Well, she says dancing, but nine months pregnant, her gait rather resembles a hippogriff than a ballerina.

No matter. In this moment, Lily feels powerful and beautiful. After the last several days of feeling like a bloated whale stranded in the middle of a desert, the sentiment is much desired. Today, it feels like nothing can hurt her, or her unborn child.

Not an accident, not the war, not You-Know-Who.

Today is perfect.

Well, it would be better if James came home unharmed and victorious from the Order mission he had to leave for two days ago. Really, he doesn’t sympathise with his poor wife at all! Leaving her behind, all heavy and round with his child while he’s off saving the world… Really, what is this, the fifteenth century? James damn well should have waited until she finally has the child so that they can run off together!

Bloody hell, now, Lily is not feeling so wonderful. What is up with those mood swings? Shouldn’t they have stopped already? On the other hand, she had barely any morning sickness, so maybe this is an exchange? In that case, fine. Not vomiting her soul out everyday in exchange for driving James and herself mad seems pretty okay. Hopefully, this child will be worth the trouble…

Playfully, she scolds, “If you don’t have ten toes, ten fingers, two arms, two legs, two ears, one nose and everything else a healthy baby needs, you’re going right back in there to grow them, do you understand, young…? Are you a boy or a girl? Mm, I’m kind of hoping for a girl. I really loved playing with dolls. You would be the prettiest girl if you let Mummy do your hair for you!”

The front door bangs open.

Lily has her wand pointed at the entrance to the living room within a second. One hand holds the wooden stick with white fingers while the other is pressed against her belly. The baby hits against it, reassuring her that they are okay.

Slowly, Lily inches backwards, thinking hard on where she can hide. Most of a pregnant witch’s magic is focused on the child, protecting and nurturing them, so they are pretty helpless. Legend has it that it’s even worse for children born in a wartime, that the magic knows of the danger and instinctively stays with the child longer, leading up to three years of magical weakness for the mother. Of course, that is rare and more whispered horror story amongst teenage witches than reality, but fact is that pregnant witches are weaker.

If that crazed Black woman… Lestrange woman and her madman of a master have found her…

Cold sweat breaks out all over Lily’s body just thinking about it. She’d be hard-pressed to ward off even one of those two in perfect condition, so if they come now… How will she protect her baby?

“Lily!” a voice shouts.

Lily turns quickly to aim at the person, ready to use some of the most gruesome spells she knows to protect her baby.

But she turns too quickly, losing her balance.

“Lily!” James materialises next to her, catching her. “Are you alright? Oh damn, what happened?”

“Intruders,” she manages to whisper, still breathless from the fright. What if she had fallen? What if she had harmed her baby? What if the intruders used that time to hurt her? What if she powerlessly had to look on as her baby was killed?

“What?! Where?” The kind, caring husband is replaced by the cold warrior, ready to defend wife and child. As much as Lily normally hates seeing her warm-hearted James being swallowed by the war, she now welcomes the change, knowing she has one of the best fighters of the Order by her side.

In a quiet voice, Lily tells him. To her bewilderment, James starts to laugh, deep, bellowing laughs.

“Oh Merlin!” he manages to get out in between gasps. “You frightened me! Merlin, Lily, that was me! I was so relieved to finally be home that I didn’t think and just stormed in!”

Enraged and not only a little bit embarrassed, Lily turns her head away. “I’m glad to see that me fearing for my – for _our lives_ is amusing to you!”

“Lily, that’s not what I- I’m sorry, Lily, you know that I always say the wrong things, do the wrong things. C’mon, Lily, please?”

One look at James’ begging eyes, and Lily can’t keep up the anger. “You’ll go shopping right now with all the things that I want to eat, right this moment!” James nods eagerly before Lily adds, a bit spitefully, “And take the dog with you!”

James hesitates. “Lily, Sirius is here in case something happens when I’m not here. Hell, even _when_ I am here, we can need some help.”

Lily murmurs something. When James asks her to, she repeats, “I know! Now go to the store and buy my things! Your brat is hungry! My sweet little baby wants to eat pickles!”

In the course of her pregnancy, James has learned that he should not comment on any dietary choices. Lily _hates_ pickles more than almost anything, but the first time he brought it up, for every bite of pickle, she made him eat one bite of the “healthy” cake recipe that she found and both of them immediately deemed “too healthy” to show him that “just because I want to eat it does not mean that it looks in any way appealing! I damn well know that I hate pickles, James! Do you think I _want_ to do this?!”

Lily Spitfire Evans on pregnancy hormones and angry is not a good thing for anyone, so James, devoted husband and brave warrior that he is, pulls in his head like a tortoise and runs off to go shopping.

James is not back yet when a soft pain starts in Lily’s abdomen. She ignores it, too focused on getting the cake _just_ right to be bothered about gas.

By the time the pickles are all gone, Lily feels sick from eating so much and James feels sick for watching her eat all _that_. Who knew babies liked to eat pickles with cake?

When Lily stands, she grunts and grips the tabletop hard, her fingers white from the strength she uses to stay upright, the other hand coming to rest on her swollen belly.

“Lily? What’s wrong?”, James asks.

Lily breathes deeply for a moment or two before she nonchalantly straightens up and throws James a look that says “you idiot.” “It’s contractions.”

“Contrac-… tions…?”, James trails off, his whole face freezing before jump-starting with panic-fuelled adrenaline. “What? Contractions? You mean… really? Oh Merlin, oh Merlin, what are we – what shall I do?”

Lily rolls her eyes. “Calm down. It’s like one every twenty minutes. We’ve still got a lot of time. The midwife said to Floo-call her when they come regularly every ten minutes.”

“What, wait, that’s – how long will that take?” James demands. “What are we going to do in the meantime? Music! Do you want to listen to music? Or-!”

“You can start by clearing the table and doing the dishes,” Lily says with a hard look at the dirty kitchen. “Have the dog help you, and so help me God, if you send him after me to look after me again!”

“That was one time!” James defends himself, but with a defeated slump to his shoulders. He starts stacking the plates on the table.

“That was Braxton Hicks! I still don’t understand why we have to have him here. He’s got a perfectly fine manor, doesn’t he?” Lily grumbles. It is not the first time that the couple had this conversation, but she needs something to focus her mind on. Contractions! Finally! The baby would finally get out of her! She would finally see them!

… She would finally give birth, with all the pain and hardships and dangers that are attached to such a drawn-out and painful process as pushing a real-life baby out of her vagina.

Much better to focus on Sirius. Really, why is he even there? He is helpful, sometimes, somehow, a bit, but who cares about back massages and protecting her husband in battle while she wasn’t there?

Man, Lily would be glad to get this pregnancy over with. She’s read that it would take some time, probably weeks if not months, for her hormones to stabilise again, but she’ looking forward to it already.

James is murmuring something about, “You don’t like him, and I don’t like Snivellus, and you still want to invite him over sometime.”

Lily doesn’t listen, too caught up in the next contraction. Twenty-six minutes since the last one.

Damn, they are getting more painful.

Are they supposed to?

Five hours later, Lily hears the now-familiar voice of the midwife. “Don’t press yet, you still need to dilate another few centimetres.”

Lily hates her so much.

Another three hours later, Lily presses. And presses. And presses. And wishes that this damn baby – this stupidly big baby would just… disappear! This is the Wizarding World! Why can’t babies disapparate right out of their mothers’ wombs? Why did no-one ever think to make a spell like that?

“- three – and press!”

Lily bites back a scream, clings harder to James’ hand and presses.

“Well done, Lily, just like that, you’re amazing,” he babbles.

Lily throws a poisonous glare at him. She knows who will have the next baby, and damn everyone who says it’s impossible! This is the Wizarding World where wonders come true! She’ll _make_ it happen if she has to, but she’ll be damned if she’ll have their next child as well. Then, it’ll be her sitting next to her spouse giving birth and whispering useless advice and false praise for something _he doesn’t even have a clue o_ -

“Good, Mrs. Potter, now relax! Wait for the next contraction – wait – wait – now, press!”

In the end, the baby is born healthy, Lily is the most exhausted and happy she’s ever been in life and _so glad_ to finally have a moment to herself. … to herself and her baby.

That will still take some getting used to, the thought of her and the baby – her son! – no longer being one entity.

She cuddles up close to her Harry when she notices – the soul mark. Immediately excited, she grabs the tiny arm, lifting it. So her darling Harry has a soulmate, ha? Will it be some words she can tease him about? After those nine months, it’s the least he can do!

As soon as she sees the words, she feels like she will faint.

Lily is not a weak woman. Within seconds, she’s put on the magical bracelet that the Potters traditionally put onto their newborn babies to prevent anyone from taking advantage of their soul marks. Only the blood relatives of the child can take it off, and even the kids themselves only are able to when they start learning magic at eleven.

God, to think that only yesterday, Lily was so vehemently opposed to subjecting her son to such barbaric practices…

With tears in her eyes, she closes the tiny buckle. More tears escape.

Lily is not a weak woman, so in a moment, she will call for James, and she will smile at him, and she will tell him that she changed her mind. She will tell him, “Why shouldn’t we put on the bracelet? If it does no harm, why not?”

But for now, she will cry out her sorrow. For now, she will cry out her heart-breaking, mind-rendering, all-consuming grief. For now, she will cry her heart out for her baby boy, born to die.

That evening, Albus comes with bad news and words of the future.

“I am sorry,” he says, grief in every line of his face. “But as long as there is the possibility of it being Harry, I thought you ought to know.”

James clings harder onto Lily. “No, no… I get it. Thank you for telling us, Albus.”

And Lily thinks back on those… those _words_ written on her perfect baby boy, and thinks back on the prophecy, and wonders if that is divine punishment for choosing James over her soulmate.

And her last thought will be, months later, horror in her heart, terror on her face, determination in her chest, “I am so sorry.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very much for reading! I hope you liked this story and that at least it wasn't as depressing as the other side stories in this series... Or if you didn't read and don't plan on reading any other part of the series (are there people like that?), that you still enjoyed this story, and thank you for giving it a chance!


End file.
